


Under Your Scars

by AgentDonegal



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Bottom Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Historical Inaccuracy, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Major Character Death Sort Of, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Slow Burn, Top Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, You get the idea, because we know its true damnit, but lets be real they are vers, can you believe they invented that, he deserves to be softeTM, its all going to be okay, let joe be a pillow princess for once, which is actually pretty sad when you think about it, which is not as homophobic as you may think, why would I say something so controversial yet so brave?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:41:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25602973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentDonegal/pseuds/AgentDonegal
Summary: And so it is that Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicolò di Genova die during the what will become known as the First Crusade, in the year 1099, somewhere between Antioch and Jerusalem.It doesn’t stick.By Nicolò’s estimate, he’s now killed one man twenty-seven times--and been killed by the same, thirty. He wonders what his name is.Continues to wonder even he’s throttled lifeless in a puddle of mud (oh, how hehopesit’s mud. This front, many miles from the first field they expired on, has so many horses).
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 18
Kudos: 123





	Under Your Scars

**Author's Note:**

> So, some of you are going to read the title and hesitate. The first few paragraphs might ring some bells. Wasn't there a fic like this posted earlier this week? Yes, there was, and I deleted it. It wasn't leading in the direction I wanted, say sorry. Let's try again.  
> Probably going to end up being a collection of one-shots, I just have so many ideas and have so little of an attention span but I just love them so much. Let's goooo!

At first there is no pain. They just stare at each other, unblinking. At last he drops his scimitar and grasps uncomprehendingly at the pommel of the sword at his groin. Pulls.

And feels, distinctly, his whole body move with it. Realizes the tip of the sword is buried somewhere behind his collarbone.

Frowning, the man who just killed him bats his hands away from the grip and claims his sword back in one long pull. Blood and viscera immediately spring forth in a massive gush to create a gown of gore down his front and then there _is_ pain, pain so devastatingly crippling he can’t even scream as he rocks to his knees.

The invader is dismissive and confident, turning away to find his next target, and so he fails to see his most recent victim gather the last of his strength to reach into his overshoes.

The single startled _Ack!_ is lost over the cacophony of war. The green-eyed man has suddenly grown a dagger from his throat.

And so it is that Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicolò di Genova die during the what will become known as the First Crusade, in the year 1099, somewhere between Antioch and Jerusalem.

It doesn’t stick.

If there is a number to be reached before they can finally strike each other down for good, much of the next several months is spent trying to find it.

By Nicolò’s estimate, he’s now killed one man twenty-seven times--and been killed by the same, thirty. He wonders what his name is.

Continues to wonder even he’s throttled lifeless in a puddle of mud (oh, how he _hopes_ it’s mud. This front, many miles from the first field they expired on, has so many horses).

Nicolò dies. He cannot say the novelty has worn off.

First there is enormous pain. Soon—how soon really depends on the way he’s dispatched, and strangling is slow, so slow, honey in the wintertime—a sense of weightlessness. The pain is no longer local but far away, unimportant; it seems to belong to someone else entirely. There is a tug somewhere in the middle of his chest and the sense of a riptide pulling him under and away. There is no light here, but neither is there darkness. There is simply nothing at all. No sound, no touch, no sight.

No fear.

It’s peaceful and vast and lonely.

Thirty-one.

He comes back to life with a shudder, sits up, looks around him. Once he sees he’s alone he takes the time to try to wipe some of the mud from the back of his head and neck. This only serves to smear the mess around, and the longer he sits the more the sun bakes it into his skin.

With a resigned huff, the Genoese soldier gets to his feet and goes about searching for his longsword. He could take any number of weapons strewn about the place, their deceased owners more perpetually unable to retrieve them than he, but he’s partial to his own. It takes him a while to retrace the steps of their lethal dance; while it (he) ended in the puddle of mud next to this pile of corpses, it started over by the knoll near a more different pile of corpses.

Started, like it usually does now, with disbelieving eye-contact; the tiniest of shrugs, a twitch at the corner of the mouth as they complete their silent exchange of, _Oh, you again?_ , and, _Well, are you ready?_

Lost their weapons there, went hand-to-hand combat here, and—ah, there it is.  
As he bends to retrieve his steel, he tells himself he only wants to know the man’s name for curiosity’s sake.

He thinks he shouldn’t care, thinks that he shouldn’t even _be_ curious, but curiosity can’t kill him any more permanently than any other death to date, so he sees no harm.

Besides, the other shares this affliction (curse? Blessing?). If they have no other similarities, none, and certainly they don’t, this alone makes it seem worth knowing.

He and the other, wherever he slunk off to, were one of the few remaining on the field when he died, so he feels no repentance for walking away.

It often happens like that, Nicolò ponders. When now they meet, they get a handful of deaths each. Since they’ve gotten good at fighting each other, at being able to sense when one will zig instead of zag, strike instead of defending, the whole process takes longer than ever. Oftentimes they’re the last ones standing and whoever gets the last kill before pure exhaustion sets in has the pleasure of walking away to find a place to rest…until the next time.

He wanders in the direction he believes Jerusalem to be—his ultimate destination, and the destination of his enduring opponent, if the repeat run-ins are any indication—hand resting comfortably on the pommel at his hip as he goes.

It would be a beautiful day if it weren’t drenched in blood and sweat and mud. The sun is high in the sky but this early in the year, it lacks the insidious intensity of the coming months. Although he thinks he’ll appreciate the dry heat of summer, because the corpses are apt to be less runny, and the flies—

For a moment, there is a vast, empty ache so deep in his chest that he travels nearly a mile before he can plunder the depth of it and recognize it for what it is; he’s homesick. This time of year, in Genoa, the breeze would be mighty and cool, rolling right off the sea. Even now he closes his eyes and can taste the salty air in his lungs, feel the wind whipping through his hair, can even hear the familiar cry of seabirds and the whip-cracking of sails from ships as they come and go from the port.

Enormous, impossibly pristine clouds race across a blue sky. Beams of sunlight fall upon the shores, warm sand beneath his feet. Drying fish-scales itch his hands as he stands beside his father, separating pinkish flesh from miniscule bone for their family table. The chatter of his slow little village all around him, families going about their lives as they always have, fishermen and hunters but warriors, if need be.

Like he is, now.

He wonders vaguely if his foe has ever dreamed of such a place as Genoa. Wonders if whatever little tribe he sprang from has ever known even a day of peace. This thought is oddly painful to him and again there’s a little voice telling him he shouldn’t care, he shouldn’t wonder. With a sigh, he turns his thoughts back to home.

Another mile passes in a daydream before he happens across a small oasis. It’s abandoned but for a few small brownish lizards that scurry quickly away at his approach. Far enough from the bloodshed, it seems untainted, impossibly pure. It is not the sea, but it is a miracle all the same.

Nicolò turns a slow, full circle. His eyesight is good—better than, if he dares be prideful about it—and sees no reason, no dangerous lurking animal nor man, to not disrobe and take advantage of this opportunity.

He lets his linens fall where they do, bloodstained and torn as they are from all the wounds he’s endured. How much less expensive his life would be if his clothes stitched themselves back together like his skin. Takes care to keep his underlayer of mail away from the water, though. After consideration, he leaves the sword, too. Figures he will not be far from it and since the land here is relatively flat. Believes he will see the approach of anyone with ill-intent and have time to go back for it.

He leaves his cross on its simple chain around his neck and otherwise stripped wades hip-deep into warm waters. It’s not much more than a puddle, really, but the grunt of relief and the guttural _lode a Dio_ which falls from his slightly chapped lips is no less sincere. He scrubs the blood from under his nailbeds, splashes palmfuls of clear water onto his face, over the stubble on his jaw. Works nimble fingers through his mud-knotted hair, scraping weeks-old filth from his scalp.

A chuckle reaches him from shore. Nicolò whips around, expecting to be dead—again—by arrow or well-thrown dagger or some other creative means before he’s able to confirm who stands there. His heart already knows. 

He does not die immediately so is met with the humiliating sight of his most memorable foe, hunkered down some fifty feet away, with _his_ longsword in hand.

Nicolò sourly recalls the ways he’s passed to date. Thrown off a cliff, yes; drowned, sure; trampled, brained, gored, disemboweled, strangled, knife through the eye, knife through the heart, arrow through the eye, yes, yes, yes. By his own sword? No. He is glad he sharpened it just the day prior.

As he’s not dead yet, however, he realizes the man has some sort of game to play first, so he takes care to fix a neutral expression.

The other shakes his head, tittering, and calls something out in Arabic. Given they’ve never said a word to each other they’ve been able to understand, Nicolò finds it significantly easier to rely on tone—and the dark-haired warrior, whatever he said, sounds oddly mirthful. If there was any reservation on this, the sparkle in those dark brown eyes and the twitching corner of his mouth reassures the observation’s correct.

There is still bubbling rage in his stomach, but Nicolò understands it is less directed at the other man— _that_ rage is just a second nature, like shivering in the cold—and more at himself, for letting himself be caught so wholly unprepared.

“You’d kill an unarmed man?” he asks wearily (must ask, despite knowing full well it’s his own fault). It’s futile in both the sense that he knows the other cannot understand him and just as surely because there is no honor to be found anywhere in this kind of enemy.

So it is Nicolò’s shame to bear, then, when he unsheathes his lethal, curved blade (one which has tasted his blood on several memorable occasions, its familiarity nearly as intimate as with his own) and tosses both it and the longsword aside. The curly-haired man holds his hands out to his sides, palms up, and arches a brow. His gaze is stern, but there are shadows of laugh-lines at the corners of his eyes.

Says something, and this time Niccolò thinks he understands; and this is how a priest from Genoa comes to learn Arabic for, ‘ _truce?_ ’

Nicolò nods cautiously, then realizes even though his vocabulary is cripplingly limited, he can do one better. Hesitates, clears his throat, and utters in halting Arabic, “Yes.”

Dark eyebrows spring away from wide eyes, now arched so high they nearly touch his hairline. A breathtakingly large smile breaks over this not-quite stranger’s face, one so seemingly heartfelt that despite everything it even tempts the corners of Nicolò’s lips to twitch.

And part in disbelief when the man, in passable Ligurian, says, “Yes? Good.”

Nicolò watches him strip down to his waist, baring well-muscled shoulders to the sun before shucking off his boots and rolling up his pantlegs. Ponders the hairlessness of a grown man's underarms with a slow blink. The man wades ankle-deep into the water and hunkers, splashing water on his face with a sigh so incredibly like the one which passed from the blond’s own lips not ten minutes ago.

It is surreal.

Before the moment passes—and he feels very urgently that it _will_ pass, that it _must_ pass, maybe not here and now but soon, soon—Nicolò asks the question he’s been meaning to.

“What is your name?”

The other says nothing. A broad hand comes up—Nicolò knows just how strong those hands are, having been strangled to death by them not an hour ago—and flicks excess moisture from his face, from his beard. His stare bores into him uncomprehendingly from under incredibly thick lashes, brown eyes searching green eyes for another hint as a worry-line creases the smooth, tanned skin between his brows. Nicolò points to his own chest.

“Nicolò,” he says. “Nicolò di Genova.”

“Ah,” the man titters, realization (but not surprise, and how can that be?) flooding his face. He nods gravely and says, “Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani.”

“This was foolish, even for you,” Yusuf laughs, longsword in hand. There’s no real heat to his words, as he has absolutely no intention of killing someone unarmed and naked. The death-glare he receives in return indicates this is not common knowledge. Insulting, but his reward is the split-second expression of utter dismay in those green eyes as the blond turned to face him.

The man he killed about an hour ago mutters something at him. He thinks it might be Ligurian, or some localized form of it, and he may know a few phrases, but this is unintelligible. It doesn’t matter—there is only one point Yusuf wishes to make. As it’s the second time in a single day this man’s been bested, and because it would be cowardly to do otherwise, Yusuf extends an olive branch.

Making very sure those watchful eyes are on him, he tosses his scimitar and the longsword aside and offers, “Truce?”

_Yes._

Not long after he sheds his padded overcoat and wades into the water, the Frank mutters something else at him. It takes almost no time at all to understand, despite the language barrier, for the same question has been on the tip of Yusuf’s tongue for some time.

 _Nicolò di Genova,_ a nice confirmation but no surprise. Allah has  
whispered this name to him many times, in his dreams.

They cleanse themselves, mostly ignoring each other all the while. When the foreigner—Nicolò—finally goes to make his way out of the water, he surprises Yusuf by first waving a hand to catch his attention. As if they both haven’t been glancing out of the corners of their eyes to ensure they know the exact location of each other in relativity to their respective weapons.

Yusuf wishes he has no reason to know this, that an olive branch can turn into a club if you’re not careful. He straightens and watches unenthusiastically as Nicolò approaches.

To give the barest amount of credit, the wiry Frank does not dive for his sword at the last possible second. He instead wanders to his underclothes, turning his back to Yusuf to dress. As he turns, Yusuf catches a sunbeam off the cross hanging around Nicolò’s neck.

Yusuf frowns gently. Despite having seen the light go out of those green eyes so many times already, he realizes there is precious little else he really knows about this man, his fated opponent. He knows Nicolò is strong and fast; that they’re of a height; that he’s above caving Yusuf’s head in from behind but will not hesitate to carve him, repeatedly, if he can, from the front.

He knows they share several similarities, perhaps the most obvious one being that Allah has chosen them, and seemingly only them, to rise and rise again. The _why_ is unknown. Yusuf does not pray for the answer, only the ability to recognize it when it is provided.

Yusuf also knows Nicolò’s been taught to view him as not much more than any other object; useful if broken. As Godless and animalistic, claiming no autonomy. Knows this because it’s the generic, though no less endless, hatred he’s met with again and again by most of those claiming their faith as their right to claim lands and murder relentlessly.

He imagines a life where one can look upon another human being and see nothing at all must be very lonely. This is the thought which stills him as they face each other once more and Nicolò moves to his weapon.

Yusuf’s already decided if he’s killed for this hesitation, Allah may see fit to revive him at least once more. Until then, it is in His hands.

Nicolò takes up his longsword. They size each other up for what feels like an eternity. It gives Yusuf the opportunity to take in the bruise-like hollows under those piercing, unsettlingly pale eyes. With a start, he realizes he himself is as tired as this other man looks. Tired all the way down to his soul.

His mind wanders to the Maghreb. He thinks of the city he left behind, with its intricately built arches and mosques and its colorful, joyful people. He aches for the familiarity of long-held traditions blending seamlessly into the easy acceptance and encouragement of advancement. Misses the baths, the books, the _one-ness_.

Instead of the whispering of the lonely wind, the only company he’s kept since leaving his home, Yusuf hears the call to _salat_ ringing out loud and clear and hauntingly beautiful. Can feel the heat of the sun shining onto the beautifully woven rugs of his home, the place he shared with the generations of people he loves and misses desperately. He can hear their kind voices, smell the spices and dried fruits baked into warm bread as they gather to share food and prayer and poetry. To share their _time_. Is there anything so precious?

The rustling of a sword being sheathed breaks him of his reverie.

From the oasis, they walk in uncomfortably forced silence in the same vague direction. Centuries later, particularly socially awkward people would liken this experience to running into someone in a grocery store you haven’t seen since high school and who you never particularly cared for anyways, forcing small-talk ( _How’s Greg? Huh? Oh. Sorry to hear that_ ), saying goodbye, then immediately turning down the same isle.

Neither are entirely comfortable with the other at their back, so they ended up walking more or less side by side until nightfall, and since by that time they had not yet killed one another it seems logical enough to share a fire.

They do.

**Author's Note:**

> Is everyone just sick to death of reading these immortal hubby's meet-not-cute? Me either. <3  
> It's been a little over a week since I watched the movie. I've watched it twice more since then and inhale virtually every fanfiction that comes my way.
> 
> I'm also aware that sometimes fanfiction can be, and I wholly believe this, unintentionally problematic. I'm going to try to be...not that.
> 
> That being said, super fair warning, I'm familiar with Catholic Guilt! but I am not Muslim or a POC. While I try to be non-problematic, please, please, please tell me if I stumble a bit, I'll gladly fix it. I try to learn on my own, it shouldn't be the emotional burden of others to teach me, but if I make a mistake it's unintentional and I'll fix it if it's brought to my attention. <3 Much love!


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